6 - Exemplification

Summary

One picture is worth ten thousand words.

Frederick R. Barnard, Printers' Ink (10 March 1927)

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894: ch. 19)

Introduction

In this chapter I introduce a number of examples whose function is to illustrate various aspects of the discussion that have taken place in earlier chapters. It is my hope that the discussion of these examples will provide a focus for some of the theoretical points which have been discussed, and point to conclusions about what productivity is and how it should be dealt with.

Proto-Germanic *-dōm

Mention was made in section 1.2 of the fact that productivity of a given process can vary diachronically. The example of Proto-Germanic *-dōm is chosen to illustrate this point. It will be shown that while some formations using this process are common across different Germanic languages (and it is thus possible, though not definite, that they are shared formations from the Common Germanic period), the use of the suffix in the daughter languages shows a great deal of variation – even though it has never become wildly productive in any of them. In some cases it seems that one meaning has ceased to be productive at all; in others some type has thrived at the expense of others.